IELTS Essay Correction: What Examiners Actually Look For

IELTS essay correction starts with the four criteria

Examiners do not read an essay and decide it "feels like a 6.5". They work down four columns of descriptors and assign a band to each, then average. That is why two essays with the same overall band can have completely different problems, and why generic feedback such as "improve your vocabulary" is so often wrong.

• Task Response: did you address all parts of the question, take a clear position and support it?
• Coherence and Cohesion: is there a logical order, clear paragraphing and natural linking?
• Lexical Resource: is the vocabulary precise, varied and used correctly, including collocation and spelling?
• Grammatical Range and Accuracy: do you use a mix of simple and complex sentences, and how many contain errors?

Any correction worth paying for, human or automated, should tell you a band for each of these and the reason for it.

Task Response: answering the question that was asked

This is where the most marks are lost and where candidates least expect it. The descriptors at band 6 say the candidate "addresses all parts of the task although some parts may be more fully covered than others". At band 7 the essay "addresses all parts of the task" and "presents a clear position throughout". The difference is not length or vocabulary; it is coverage and consistency.

Typical failures: a two-part question where the second part gets one sentence; a "to what extent" question answered with a list of advantages and disadvantages and no extent; an opinion stated in the introduction and contradicted in the conclusion. A good corrector quotes the question back to you and shows exactly which part is missing or underdeveloped. If your feedback never mentions the question, it is not checking Task Response.

Coherence: what "logical progression" means at band 6 vs 7

At band 6, information is "arranged coherently" and there is "a clear overall progression", but cohesive devices may be "faulty or mechanical". At band 7 the essay "logically organises information and ideas" and uses "a range of cohesive devices appropriately". In practice, band 6 essays usually have the right paragraphs in the right order but start every sentence with a connector: "Firstly… Moreover… Furthermore… In addition…". Band 7 essays link ideas through reference ("this policy", "such changes") and through the logic of the sentences themselves.

The other common band 6 marker is the paragraph with no central idea: three loosely related sentences that each introduce something new. The fix is one topic sentence per paragraph, then every other sentence either explains it, supports it with an example, or qualifies it.

Lexical Resource: precision beats rarity

Candidates are often told to use "academic vocabulary" and respond by memorising lists. The descriptors reward something different: "a sufficient range of vocabulary to allow some flexibility and precision" at band 7, with "less common lexical items" used with "some awareness of style and collocation". The key words are precision and collocation. "Make a research" costs more than never using the word "research" at all. "Plethora of advantages" in an essay about bus fares reads as inflated, and examiners notice.

What moves this criterion is using the right word for the idea, repeating words less by rephrasing naturally, and spelling consistently. A correction that highlights every uncommon word as "good vocabulary" is flattering you, not scoring you.

Grammar: the errors examiners weight most

Band 6 allows "some errors in grammar and punctuation" that "rarely reduce communication". Band 7 requires "frequent error-free sentences". The examiner is therefore counting two things: how many sentences are completely correct, and whether any error makes the meaning unclear. Articles and subject–verb agreement are frequent but rarely obscure meaning. Run-on sentences, wrong tense in a conditional and misplaced relative clauses do obscure meaning, and those are the errors that pull the band down fastest. The grammar guide for IELTS and TOEFL covers each of these with examples.

A corrected band 6 paragraph

The corrected version is not longer and does not use rarer words. It makes one point and develops it, which is what three of the four criteria are really measuring.

Human vs AI correction, honestly

A trained human examiner can judge whether an argument would persuade, notice when tone is wrong, and explain a subtle collocation problem. Human correction is also slow, expensive and inconsistent between markers. Criteria-based AI correction is fast and consistent, scores the four criteria separately and keeps your history, so you can see whether Coherence has moved after a month. It cannot promise that your argument is convincing, and a general chatbot is worse still, as we showed in our comparison of an IELTS writing checker and ChatGPT. How Langujet's model maps features to the descriptors is described on the AI feedback page. The sensible routine is frequent AI correction for practice and a human review before milestone mocks.

Practise with Langujet

Submit one essay to Langujet IELTS writing correction and read only the lowest of the four criterion scores. That is the criterion to practise this week. Choose prompts by essay type from the IELTS Writing Task 2 guide, resubmit after rewriting, and compare the two reports side by side.